Appendix A. Managing your etch system

This appendix contains information on how to make sure you can install or
upgrade etch packages before you upgrade to lenny. This should only be
necessary in specific situations.

A.1. Upgrading your etch system

Basically this is no different than any other upgrade of etch you've been
doing. The only difference is that you first need to make sure your package
list still contains references to etch as explained in Section A.2, “Checking your sources list”.

If you upgrade your system using a Debian mirror, it will automatically be
upgraded to the latest etch point release.

A.2. Checking your sources list

If any of the lines in your /etc/apt/sources.list refer to
'stable', you are effectively already “using” lenny. If you have already run
apt-get update, you can still get back without problems
following the procedure below.

If you have also already installed packages from lenny, there probably is not
much point in installing packages from etch anymore. In that case you will
have to decide for yourself whether you want to continue or not. It is
possible to downgrade packages, but that is not covered here.

Open the file /etc/apt/sources.list with your favorite
editor (as root) and check all lines beginning with deb
http: or deb ftp: for a reference to
“stable”. If you find any, change stable
to etch.

If you have any lines starting with deb file:, you will have
to check for yourself if the location they refer to contains an etch or a lenny
archive.

Important

Do not change any lines that begin with deb cdrom:.
Doing so would invalidate the line and you would have to
run apt-cdrom again. Do not be alarmed if a
'cdrom' source line refers to “unstable”.
Although confusing, this is normal.